The Scholastic Beginnings of the Baby Geniuses
by ReidsFanGirl18
Summary: Part of the series that began with "You Have That effect on Me", The twins are now 3 yrs old and just when Reid is getting comfortable in his carefully orchestrated pattern of juggling work and family, the start of their organized schooling will put that balance to a test he never thought imaginable that will test him as both an agent and a father. REVIEWS APPRECIATED
1. Chapter 1: The Kitty & The Rhino

It was the fourth of July, 2018. But for Reid it was also the birthday of his two children, now three years old. He'd learned much since they'd been born, about balancing the job he loved, with its near constant travel and long, often irregular, hours, with his love for them and their mother and what precious time he had with them when he was home.

Currently he was at the kitchen table, drinking his morning coffee and hoping that Hotch wouldn't call him in on this particular day, he wanted to be here, with Maeve and the kids, and besides he was too distracted by the last three years playing in his head like a movie.

Conan and Evina had proven early on that they were most certainly their father's children. They never liked the classic baby games of peek-a-boo or having a stuffed animal shaken in front of their faces. They would always either turn away or start to cry, but on the other hand… they had progressed in some ways at alarming rates… they both started to stand unsupported only weeks after learning to crawl and they had been reading by age one and talking in full, short sentences a month later… because their physical aspects of speech were still under-developed it sounded broken, almost like an immigrant who came to the US knowing some English but they got their point across well enough.

This had become evident when at fifteen months of age, Evina, while sitting on Spencer's lap in the nursery rocking chair, she had sat straight up, pointed her tiny finger toward the bookshelf and said in her sweet little voice: Story time Daddy! Story time!"

"Ok, which book do you want?" He had asked, expecting her to answer by describing the color or the picture on the cover, since at this point he had never seen her read without him or her mother reading to her.

"Da Pwincess an da Sta Bwidge…" She said excitedly.

Reid was utterly shocked, this was a book that was translation of an old South Korean fable, and it was something he and Maeve had put on the shelf but had never read to her or her brother. They hadn't even mentioned it by name. So how could she possibly know what it was called? Unless…unless she had read the cover for herself… but that would imply that hos one year-old daughter could already read for herself.

So he carried her with him over to the shelf, took it off the second shelf from the bottom, sat back down, opened it and read. As the story went on, there was no inkling of surprise on Evina's face, it was as if she had heard it all before.

"Sweetheart, do you know this story?"

"Yep…"

"How do you know how it goes?"

"Me wead it…last week…you at work…"

"Did somebody read it to you?" he asked.

"No…me wead it all by myself…"

"Ok, then read the rest of it to Daddy…" He suggested.

So she did, and did so stumbling only on some of the bigger words, much less than his highest expectations…

"Daddy?" His trip down memory lane was broken by Evina's voice calling him back to the present. She stood there, in her light purple, denim jumper with a white top underneath it, her wispy chestnut hair now fell almost to her waist. He remembered when, a year earlier, they had tried to have it cut… not only had she bitten her hair-dresser, but she had refused to speak to or make eye-contact with either of them for almost a month. The message was clear. She wanted it long and she was bound and determined to keep it long.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Conan stole my kitty… the new white one Aunty Penelope got me for our birthday…"

"Well, let's go see if we can get him to give it back…" He replied, reaching down for her hand, she responded by placing it in his and the two started walking toward Conan's room, which had once been the unfurnished guest room.

There it sat on top of his toy box, a white stuffed cat, wearing a tiara, along with his various stuffed dinosaurs and zoo animals.

"Conan…"

"Hey Daddy…"

"Did you take your sister's stuffed cat?"

"…no…"

"Are you sure…because it's sitting right there in plain sight…"

"Well she's the one who put a ballerina costume on my rhino…" he said, pointing to wear the rhino sat.

Sure enough, Tiki the stuffed Rhino, which had been Conan's favorite since it was given to him two years ago as of that very day, was indeed wearing a pink, lacy tutu that there was no way Conan had put on it.

"Evina… did you dress your brother's rhino like a ballerina?"

"Yes…"

"Ok, since the Rhino isn't yours, you need to ask your brother if you can play with it… and then give it back to him just like it was when he gave it to you… alright?"

"Yes Daddy…"

"On the same note… Conan… give her cat back…"

"I don't wanna…"

"GIVE IT BACK!" Evina screamed. This prompted her brother to start slapping her vertically with the palms and backs of his hands, his nails scratching at her clothes and face, she retaliated by doing the same but to his hands, in order to keep him at bay.

"Enough." Spencer said, calmly but firmly.

He put a hand on each of their shoulders and forced them apart at arm's length.

"In this house we do not lie, we do not talk back, we do not steal, and we especially do not fight with each other. I'm _very _disappointed in both of you. Now… you are each grounded from the stuffed animals in question for a full week. You, Conan are grounded from TV for the rest of the day and you will get no desert tonight, no birthday cake, and no ice creme. Evina, go to the basement, Conan go to the attic, you will both stay there for three minutes until I blow my whistle, then you will walk toward each other, meet in the kitchen and apologize to each other."

"No fair…why am I getting punished more than she is?" Conan asked.

"Because you talked back rudely and you lied to me… the more you complain the longer it'll be. When are you two going to learn not to mess with each other's belongings?"

The little boy shrugged and started walking, his sister had already left.


	2. Chapter 2: School Talk & Games of Chess

"You spoil her you know…" Maeve told him a few hours later as they were tag-teaming the lunch dishes.

"No I don't…"

"Oh really? She's had you wrapped around her little finger since the first time you held her… we have to be fair, you either need to be more strict with her or you need to loosen up on Conan. The last thing I want is for them to grow up resenting each other…"

"Speaking of them growing up… now that they're three we need to start thinking about where we want to send them to school…" Spencer replied.

"You're right, we should decide on a preschool in time to get them in next school year…"

"I'm not so sure that a normal preschool is what they need though… they're only three and they're already reading small chapter books, Conan is really good at chess, which I play with him every night I'm home, tonight included…"

"Chess?"

"What? I bond with my son… and he's a good kid most of the time, he's just… strangely aggressive, it's weird. I don't want it to be a problem later for him or anyone he's with. So when he gets like that, yes I'm hard on him. But only because he needs to learn that slapping his sister, or anyone for that matter, isn't any way to resolve conflicts."

"Ok, you have a point… and you're right… they aren't exactly normal kids… and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It might make life a little harder for them later on, and that scares me but…they're actually ahead of the game in some ways, way ahead… so what are we looking for, for them?"

"Well we want them to be challenged…" he said.

"Socially they will be, the only other kid they've ever met their own age is each other."

"I know but I mean academically… I'd say on that front they're already at a first or second grade level…"

"But do you think it's a good idea to have them skip grades? I mean…you did…and the older kids tortured you… I don't want to hold them back academically either, but I won't send them off to be bullied into the ground every day and neither of us has time to homeschool them…so what do we do?"

"I don't know…I skipped a total of six grades, and there were days I wished I hadn't… it was horrible… high school was the worst…that's the last thing I want for them…"

"Exactly my point…"

"That aside the public schools in DC are terrible…even for 'normal' kids… so that leaves us with charter and private schools…"

"I know I'd like some continuity for them, a school that could carry them all the way through twelfth grade…so they wouldn't have to bounce around every couple of years…"

"So a k-12 then…" he said, scribbling down a list of each criteria on a paper towel.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm making a list of what we're looking for so I can do some research later and find one…"

"That makes sense…"

So that's what he did, that is…after playing with the kids and having dinner and birthday cake. He did eventually decide to relent and let Conan have cake and ice crème… though he was still grounded from TV and his rhino.

When he and Conan were playing their usual game of father vs. son chess, Spencer decided to test the waters a little bit to see how much the little boy understood about how his and his sister's lives were about to change.

"Hey Conan…"

"Yes Daddy?" he replied, moving his pawn to a position where it could trap his father's knight.

"Now that you're old enough, probably in a few months, you and your sister will start going to school… I was wondering what you thought about that…"

"We already learn things here… you taught us to play chess and to add and subtract…and either you or mommy takes us to the library once a week…we bring home books that the library lady is surprised that we choose because she thinks they're too hard…I don't think we need to go to school." He said.

"Well Buddy, there comes a point where you do…and there are things in school that we can't teach you here…"

"Like what?"

"Like how to play with somebody your own age besides your sister for one thing…"

"We have friends…"

"Both of whom are more than twice your own age…"

"Jack's cool…he constantly beats me at basketball but that's because he's twice as big as me…"

"And four times your age…you need to make friends closer to your own age…"

"Did you when you were in school?"

"Well yeah, sure, I had a couple…"

"What about the other kids…?"

"A lot of them, most actually… just sort of ignored me…some…I'll admit… were mean…"

"We don't wanna go to school with a bunch of mean kids… we wanna stay here…"

"You still will be here, just not as much…it's like you know how when your mom and I have to both work, you go over to Nana Penny's house?" he asked, his own grandmother had decided to leave small town New York to be closer to her great-grandchildren, and had by her own choosing become the go-to when he and Maeve needed someone to look after the twins.

"Yeah…"

"Well it'll be kind of like that…only it'll be the same days every week and the same amount of time every day and the adults there will try to get you to do specific things…"

"Ok…"

Later on, after the twins were asleep, Spencer found himself braving the use of their home computer, looking online at schools in the area, curriculum, class size, extra-curricular programs, graduation and college acceptance statistics. He made a handwritten short-list of schools based on what he was finding combined with the criteria he and Maeve had discussed earlier that afternoon, complete with detailing how each one had made it onto the list. Then he went to his own bookshelf and read several books on developmental psychology and educational theory.

One school stood out from the crowd, a pre-k – 12, private school… Aristotle Classical Academy, had been started fifteen years before… it was known for not just getting one-hundred percent of its students into college, but getting over eighty percent into one of the top twenty programs for their chosen major and over ninety percent earning academic scholarships… this was the place.


	3. Being a Dad is Harder than it Looks

In August, Maeve took the twins to their new school to take the entrance exam, which doubled as a placement test. The school was designed to challenge even the most gifted kids and it did this by placing them in one of four levels at each year. If they qualified for one of the three levels of honors, they would likely be doing college level material before the end of high school. Level one honors, would have them doing kindergarten level stuff this year, level two would have them doing first grade, and level three would have them doing second grade work this school year.

The school was a two story red-brick building which had a statue of its namesake on the front lawn, inside it was a beautiful, clean facility full of color. There were student art projects, class party and activity photos, and quotes about perseverance, citizenship, and learning.

Almost as soon as they were checked in, the twins were taken into separate empty classrooms and given the exam, for students so young the test started out with recognizing shapes, numbers, letters, colors, and common items, then moved on to test handwriting, reading, and basic math… It even included basic cognitive development exercises, such as testing whether or not the recognized that two, different sized cups, held the same amount of liquid. All Maeve could do, was stand in the hallway and wait. She couldn't even see inside to get a glimpse of how her children were doing.

When they were finished, Maeve took them across the street for ice crème to distract them as they waited for the text alert to Maeve's phone, saying that they had finished scoring the exams.

"Mommy…we are going to get in…aren't we?" Evina asked, uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

"Of course you will Sweetie, you _both _will, but that test wasn't just about whether or not you'd get in, it also lets them know which class to put you in, so you don't get placed in a class that's too easy or too hard for you…now eat your ice crème before it melts." She told them.

"Ok!" they responded, happily digging in.

A few minutes later, Maeve's phone buzzed, alerting her that the message they'd been waiting for had come.

"Time to go you two…"

They got up and left the ice crème shop, then each child took one of their mother's hands and the three of them headed back across the crosswalk to the school.

They didn't have to wait there, in the lobby more than five minutes before they heard their last name called and they were escorted to the admissions officer's office. Maeve sat down in front of the desk, Evina and Conan took two child-sized chairs on either side of her in the small, yellow-walled room.

Soon a woman in her forties who was clearly of Asian descent, joined them and sat behind the desk.

"We have evaluated their examinations… both Evina and Conan Reid, not only passed the score required for basic entry, but they scored high enough to be placed in pre-kindergarten honors level three. They are exceptionally bright children and are at only three years old, functioning at a second grade level across the board. Actually if they tested much higher I'd have to suggest elevating them to regular third grade…"

"I see…well…thank you…"

"No, thank you… goodbye children, I'll see you on the first day of classes…"

On September first, the new school year would begin…

Reid had come home from a particularly trying away case the day before, to find his children literally jumping into his arms and almost choking him with squeezing hugs around his neck. He smiled and wrapped his arms around them.

"We missed you Daddy!"

"I missed you too…"

They were trying on their new school uniforms, for about the millionth time. The twins had been tiny for their age since birth even though they were growing at the normal rate, actually, since they were behind starting out that was precisely the reason they were still so small for their age. As a result, the school didn't carry uniforms to fit them so they had been issued five sets each of the smallest size available and Nana had been making slight adjustments ever since.

Both boys and girls had to wear white, long-sleeved, button down dress-shirts, the only real difference there was that Evina's collar and the cuffs of her sleeves were trimmed with lace while her brother's didn't have any. By the looks of it, Conan's slacks had finally been successfully hemmed to accommodate his two-foot, eleven-inch body, however Evina's navy-blue jumper still fell between her knees and her ankles in length. Conan's sweater-vest had been the one piece to fit right out of the packaging.

"How'd it go in Kentucky…?" Maeve asked.

"Did you catch the bad guy Daddy?" Evina asked.

"We got him… he's going to go away for a long, long time…and guess what?"

"What?"

"I get the day off tomorrow…"

"Yay!" the twins replied in unison, jumping up and down.

"Great because I have to go in tomorrow…" Maeve said, "Now that I'm finally back in the lab they seem to want me in there a lot…so I need you to get the kids to school…"

"Ok…"

"I have to leave at six am so I need you to get them up, dressed, make sure they get breakfast and then make sure they're at school by sever forty-five…"

"That…doesn't sound so hard…" he said, unconvincingly.

Most of it wouldn't be, in large part the kids could dress themselves now, though he would have to help them with the parts of the uniform they lacked the dexterity to handle on their own, such as the red, string-like ribbon that went around Evina's collar, Conan's matching neck-tie, or his belt, which he never seemed to get through every loop…

What scared him, was the prospect of attempting to braid his daughter's extremely long hair, which was now, when it hung loose, only 8.2 inches off the ground. He had never done a girl's hair before and he knew that Evina was very particular about how it was done.

Tired as he was by the end of the night, Spencer was only half awoken from his slumber when Maeve's alarm went off. He barely felt her get out of bed or heard her rustle in their closet; and he was just barely conscious enough to remember her giving him a goodbye kiss.

When his own alarm went off forty-five minutes later, he got up, got dressed, went downstairs and made three plates of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and bacon, one with coffee and two with pulp-free orange juice. Once the table was set, he put a plastic bowl over each plate to keep the food hot, downed the medication that kept his chronic migraines at bay, and went back upstairs to wake the twins.

"Evina, Conan, it's breakfast time…" he called, surprisingly not only did they get up but they literally ran right passed him down to the table.

"Hey! No running in the house, you could hurt yourselves!"

"Sorry…"

He went down to join them.

Once they had eaten, he told them to go get dressed. Which they did, with just a little bit of help.

Then came the hard part… Evina's hair… he managed to brush it out just fine… that was the easy part… the hard part was getting it into double French braids.

"Ow! Daddy that hurts, you're pulling too hard…"

"I'm sorry Sweetie but there's a lot of hair here…" he said, making a point of being more gentle with the comb.

"Mommy can do it in less than five minutes…"

"Well then I wish she'd left us with some instructions…" he replied. He really did wish Maeve had shown him how to do this beforehand.

It wasn't easy, but eventually they made it, the long brown forest that was his daughter's hair was neatly in two matching French braids on either side of her head. But then, instead of getting her shoes on, she brought him two foot-long lengths of navy-blue satin ribbon.

"What's that for?"

"Here…" she said, handing him the ribbons. "Now you have to tie bows at the ends… you said you'd do it just like Mommy does…"

"And she ties bows at the ends huh?" he asked.

The little girl nodded.

"Alright, come a little closer and turn around." She obeyed, and Reid did as he had promised. They weren't perfect but they were far from terrible.

"Hey Daddy…it's time to go…" Conan said, pointing to the analog clock above the kitchen sink.

"Ok, alright, do we have our shoes on?" he asked.

By now they both did.

"Do we have our book-bags?" he asked.

They each ran and got their brand-new chocolate brown messenger bags.

"Are we ready to make new friends?"

"Yes!" they replied in unison, though it was noticeable that Evina was much more enthusiastic about this part than her brother was.

"Are we ready to learn something new?"

"YES!" they yelled happily.

"Alright, let's go!" he said, leading them out to the same vintage Volvo that had brought them home from the hospital only days after their birth. He lifted each one into their car-seat and then drove to the academy.

It was only when they got there, that the twins seemed to retract… all their usual confidence had disappeared, they didn't just stay within eyesight, as they had been taught to do their whole lives, they clung to and even hid behind their father.

Their fear only served to exacerbate Reid's own apprehension about this day, never in three years, had he ever left his children in the hands of people he did not know, did not trust with his very life and love like family whether they were or not… and now he was about to leave them with complete strangers…

Reid went to the front desk to check them in, as a parent or guardian of every new student had to do on the first day…the receptionist could clearly see the apprehension on his face.

She was a bright, pleasant older lady, with short, curly brown hair that was starting to gray, and a knowing and empathetic smile.

"First time?" she asked.

"Yeah…"

"Name(s)?"

"Evina and Conan Reid…"

"Ah yes, there's only one class this year at their level, and only fourteen children in it… it's taught by Mrs. Collingsworth… she's very good with them… Alright, we're all checked in now…"

"Thank you so much…um… there is the small matter of…"

"Yes…in your application, in the emergency contacts for them you listed yourself, your wife, and your grandmother…is that correct?"

"Yes it is…"

"But you also provided a slightly longer short-list of names and contact information stating that only the people on this list should ever be able to take either of the children off campus…most of them are co-workers/family friends… we understand…"

"Good…I just wanted to make sure…"

"I understand…now their peer leader will show them where their classroom is…"

That's when a girl, who was probably ten or eleven, with black hair and blue eyes, appeared at the edge of the hallway…"

"Vanessa is part of our fourth-grade honors three class… she's show them where things are in the halls and in the lunchroom and they can ask her any questions they like about life here…"

"Sir, I assure you… I won't let them get lost in this maze…" the older girl said politely. "This way guys…" she said, leading them down the hall…

"Bye Daddy…" they said as they turned to follow her.

"Bye kids…have fun…" he replied, watching helplessly as the two most precious people in his life, disappeared as they turned down another hallway.


	4. Chapter 4: First Day

Vanessa led the twins to a classroom on the first floor. It had low, child-sized, square, white tables with beveled edges. Each table had a nametag at each end and they were two different colors, there was a red tag and a blue tag at each table and the chairs matched the nametag in front of them.

Evina tried to think through what, what she was seeing meant. Daddy had always taught them to pay attention to the world around them, to see what lay in front of them and learn what it meant.

_Two chairs, to kids at each table, nametags, we don't get to choose where we sit, the teacher does, two different colors, they've put us into two groups somehow…_

She looked at her brother, he just looked bewildered and overwhelmed. Evina wasn't surprised, Conan never had liked change very much. New places and people, any deviation from their comfortable routine scared and unnerved him.

"Let's just hope we get to sit together…" She whispered in his ear.

He nodded and the two siblings began searching for their nametags. There were six tables in all, in two columns in the front half of the classroom, the back half looked like a multipurpose area full of props and toys and books.

Evina found her name in front of the red chair at table two, which was in the front row closest to the door. She took her seat next to the inside isle and took her packaged stack of school supplies out of her book bag and slid them onto the surface of the desk (they were too heavy for her to actually lift).

She started to wave her brother over but then she noticed that there was already a backpack on the back of the blue chair next to her. She turned around and watched as her brother slumped into his seat in the second row, by the window on the other side of the room.

So they were separated, she knew that would be worse for her brother than it would be for her. She didn't like change or strangers either, she just dealt with it better. Conan would freak out, like he had on their birthday when she'd made the mistake of leaving her ballerina outfit on his stuffed Rhino… He would try to get revenge or have what Daddy called a "meltdown". That basically meant that Conan would sit on his knees on the floor and bang his fists or sometimes even his head on the ground and cry when something…anything was out of place.

She understood his frustrations… the same things bothered her, but instead of melting down, she internalized. If one of the many things she was particular about was thrown off, if the smooth, familiar rhythm of her life that made her feel safe was interrupted as it had been the moment they'd gotten up this morning, she was just all the more particular about something else.

She looked over at the other nametag at her table and saw that it belonged to somebody named James Collins… whoever this person was, she hope that he didn't try to talk too much or ask her too many questions. When talking to anyone outside her own extended family, she froze and retreated into her shell. She couldn't make sense of stranger's faces. She'd learned to decode the expressions and mannerisms of the people she'd grown up around. She could tell, after fighting with her brother, just how much trouble they were in by the look on her parents' faces… but strangers were a mystery.

When James sat down, Evina pretended not to notice. It wasn't until that time that she noticed something else. Every single other kid in the room besides her own brother, was roughly six to eight inches taller than they were. Physically, they were the smallest kids in class.

That's when Mrs. Collingsworth got up from her own desk, wrote her name on the dry erase board, and called the class to attention by ringing a small gold bell.

"Good morning children!" She said happily.

_At least our teacher seems nice… _Evina thought.

She looked around as if she expected the students to respond in some way, but everybody just sat there, staring at her, awaiting further instructions.

"That was just to see if anyone knew what to do, I didn't really expect you to since it's your very first day. In this school, when your teacher tells you good morning, you get up, stand to the right of your seats and tell them, using their name, good morning… now let's try this out… Good morning children!"

The class got up and stood where they were told.

"Good Morning Mrs. Collingsworth…" the group replied, almost in unison.

"Well done… simply fantastic to see so many new faces this morning… you all are in this class because you're among the brightest of your age, years ahead of most other three and four year olds. Over the course of a year we will take you even father… by the end of the year we will have learned the basics of Latin and Greek as well as English… we will understand how plants grow and why they don't need to eat like us… we will understand why certain animals live in certain places, and we will not only know how to add and subtract three, four, and even five digit numbers, but we will have learned our multiplication tables! Doesn't that sound fun?!" She asked, sounding like she was pretty excited about it.

Meanwhile, Reid was stalking around the house, trying and failing to keep himself busy with various things. He hadn't had this much time on his hands since before the twins were born… it seemed like he was either working or home, playing with, reading to or with, or teaching his children… now every time he got the odd weekday off, he'd be alone…. He understood that this was the natural course of life and he knew he and Maeve had put the twins in the best possible school for children like them, but part of him wanted to go back when they were always there… If he was like this now, how would he react when they started to drive or date? What about when they left for college?


	5. Chapter 5: Conan's Meltdown

Back at the school, Evina was using her innate ability to focus entirely on two things at once… On the one hand, she was carefully writing each letter of the Greek alphabet, trying hard to make each one look like the example in her "Fun with Foreign Languages" workbook; on the other hand, she was watching her brother, the girl sitting next to him was talking too much and Conan was clearly having trouble tuning her out. Usually languages were his thing, one of Daddy's friends had given them a book with the alphabets of a lot of different languages when they were born. He'd not only read it, Conan had memorized it, so this first assignment should be easy for him. But it clearly wasn't, not with her chattering away.

Luckily for her, even though it wouldn't have bothered her as much, James had stayed quiet. He hadn't even asked her name, and seemed content and engrossed in his own work. The longer he was silent, the more she liked him, but then he did the one thing that she couldn't even bear for her own parents to do to her. He yanked on one of her braids.

She immediately put her head down, her tiny frame arched over her work, and hissed like an angry cat.

"Hey I just wanted to ask you how you got that to look right…" He said defensively, pointing to one of the Greek characters she'd written. "What's your name anyway?" he said more softly.

"It's Evina… and you just did something I really don't like."

"Ok, whatever it is I'm sorry."

"Do. Not. Pull. My. Hair. Ever. Again." She hissed angrily.

"Alright Children…settle down…" Mrs. Collingsworth interjected. "Ten more minutes and then you'll have to take this home because it'll be time for recess!"

Those ten minutes seemed to tick on and on like an eternity… by the time the bell rang, Evina was about ready to shove James into the wall.

As the other kids left the classroom and followed the aids standing in the hallway out to the playground, Evina stayed behind.

"Mrs. Collingsworth…" she said quietly, not looking up to meet her teacher's eyes, but keeping her gaze straight ahead at where the dry-erase board met the lower part of the wall.

"Yes Evina?" she replied, smiling down at the miniature three-year-old genius in front of her. Behind the smile she was acutely aware that Evina was making no effort at eye-contact.

"Can I please trade places with the girl by the window and sit by my brother?"

"Oh, I know it's hard for you two, since this is the first time you've been in a crowd like this your own age, but I separated you on purpose. Part of school is learning how to be around people you don't live with or see all the time…"

"It's not me that I'm worried about… It's my brother, just look at him…" The little girl commanded with an innocence and intensity that allowed for no refusal. She pointed with her arm outstretched but without turning her head, toward her brother. The only other kid in the class who was still in the room.

Conan was still in his seat, but he was curled in a ball, with his feet on the chair and his arms around his legs, rocking back and forth with a blank, and yet somehow vaguely unhappy look on his face as if in some unpleasant trance.

In the top edge of her gaze, Evina saw her teacher's eyes go wide, she couldn't decipher exactly what was in that look, but she saw enough to respond.

"He does that when you mess with him too much, when he's confused and scared…please… he won't do that if he's next to me…"

Collingsworth moved over to Conan, got down to his level and tried to calm him, but her touch just made the situation worse, he rolled out of the chair onto the floor behind his desk and started banging his head and his fists on the ground.

Then Evina walked over and put a hand on her twin's shoulder. Conan stopped as if she'd it an off switch or he'd been awoken from hypnosis. He was like a normal kid again.

"See what I mean?" Evina asked, still not making eye-contact.

"I'll think about it, in the meantime, take him and go play with the other kids…"

Evina obeyed, she left and when Conan sensed that his sister had left the room, he followed.


	6. Chapter 6: Love & Understanding

When they were gone, Collingsworth noticed that the head mistress of the school, who had taught the regular first grade up until her promotion just six months earlier, had been watching the whole time. She was an older woman with a tall, thin frame, straight, thick brown hair which was fading to gray, and large thick glasses.

"What's with those two? I mean the little girl is a little strange… she won't make eye-contact with anyone but her brother and she doesn't seem to quite grasp the concept of authority… but that little boy… he was freaking out… I thought this was level three honors pre-k…" she said.

"It is…"

"Then aren't they supposed to be at a second grade level?"

"Academically they are, but they're still three year olds…"

"I raised eight kids, not a one of them acted like that at age three…there's something wrong with them…"

"No. No there is not. You don't understand… these kids have IQs in the one-eighties… with that usually comes varying degrees of eccentricity... it's not uncommon for my students to fall somewhere on the Autism Spectrum…"

"I thought Autistic kids couldn't talk…" she said.

"Well yes and no… there are actually quite a few different types… these two are definitely showing tendencies of the type we used to refer to as Asperger's… basically what that means is that they don't learn correct behavior through observational learning. Instead you need to teach them by communicating and explaining to them what they need to do…and as for what you saw in there… people at any point on the spectrum almost always have issues with sensory integration. He's in a room full of kids he's never seen, separated from his sister and even more removed from his parents and other family members, probably for the first time ever and he freaked out. What was he supposed to do? He doesn't have the mental elasticity or self-awareness yet to consciously internalize it and pretend that everything is fine… I'm not even sure that's healthy for his emotional state even if he could manage it."

"So what are you going to do…?" the former teacher asked as they walked down the hallway. It was a challenge and Collingsworth could see it, her boss was wondering if she could handle this…if she had a plan.

"Clearly I pushed him too far way too soon, so I'm going to place him next to his sister so he has his familiar person near him again and then I'm going to watch him… if his or his sister's issues still get in the way of them learning what they need to learn or being happy here at the end of the week, or if he suffers another meltdown, I'm calling their parents in to see what we can do about it…probably suggest a more formal evaluation and discuss ways that I can help them…"

"I thought you said a lot of your kids are like this…"

"That's if you want to lump them in together under the label, each child is different… each one has different sensory triggers and different things or people that calm them back down. Usually they're gifted to the extreme in one subject or subject type but struggle in another… these also very but the things they're good at and interested in can be used to get through to them with information they otherwise wouldn't retain. To know what those are for these two, it would be helpful to speak to the people who know them best… That would be their family."

"That sounds like you have everything under control, if you need anything, need my office to meet with the family or if you need to coordinate with anyone, let me know…"

"Thanks Jackie…"

"You're welcome Rita…This is why my dad founded the school… so that kids who were smart… who really could grow up to be absolutely anything they wanted… would have a place to go where they wouldn't be cast aside or thrown into a shark tank of older kids while they themselves are still guppies."

When the students came back into the classroom, Mrs. Collingsworth called the class to order but didn't start a new lesson.

"I'm changing the seating-chart just a little bit… James, you will switch with Conan…" She said… she watched as Conan's face lit up as if she had rescued him from an oncoming train. He gathered his things and ran over to his new seat beside his sister.

The rest of the day continued on without incident, but while Evina was happy and seemingly un-phased, now that her brother was back at her side and James wasn't there to pull on her hair. Conan couldn't shake the feeling that things had come very close to going very badly…

When the final bell rang, and Reid came to pick them up… he noticed that his son was unhappy. He wouldn't meet his eye, wouldn't say a word. On the drive home, when he asked about their day, where most children would have chattered on for hours if allowed, Spencer almost had to pry to get so much as two words out of his son.

"What's wrong Buddy?" he finally asked when they arrived home.

"Nothing…"

"Nothing…? Then why are you so quiet tonight…? Come on, tell me about your first day…"

"I don't want to talk about it…"

"What happened?" Reid asked, finally understanding that the little boy's uncharacteristic silence was due to sadness and shame, about something he didn't want his father to know.

"Conan had one of his meltdowns at school…nobody saw… it was right before recess and everyone else was gone…" Evina told him.

"Thanks sis…" he said angrily, upset with her for ratting him out. "I'm sorry Daddy… at first the teacher put us on opposite sides of the room and the girl next to me was talking too much and I couldn't tune her out and she wouldn't stop no matter how many times I asked her to. I just couldn't take it anymore…" the little boy was crying now, frustrated with himself and terrified of disappointing his father, one of so few people Conan could actually understand and make sense of, and who knew him almost as if they were one.

But Reid wasn't angry, as Conan had feared… Not at all. He just picked up his son and hugged him, telling him that everything was going to be alright.

"She said she separated us on purpose to get us to socialize with the other kids, but after we came back from recess she made the boy next to me switch with Conan so that he was over next to me…"

"Good…" Reid replied.

"Are angry with me Daddy?"

"No…no…absolutely not…why would I be angry with you?"

"I freaked out on the first day…"

"I can't say I blame you… I probably would have too if I were in your shoes… Conan…I love you, so much… you, and your sister…and your mom…are my entire world…nothing is _ever _going to change that…do you understand?"

The little boy nodded.

"Thanks Daddy…"


	7. Chapter 7: The Office of Reckoning

"I am a horrible…_Horrible _father…" Reid told Maeve later that night, when homework, and supper, and playtime was done and the twins were asleep.

"You are not…" She said, scoffing at this ridiculous idea.

"Conan had a meltdown on his first day of school ever… I just dropped them off… I left them in that place."

"They're starting preschool… that's a big transition…and as much as change in general bothers those two… you didn't actually think it would be smooth sailing on day one did you?" she asked.

"Well…no…but…"

"But the bumps in the road are almost harder for you than for them…because you hate seeing them in pain or unhappy… I know…me too…but you know as well as I do that we had to do this at some point…we can't shelter them in this house forever…"

"I know…I know…but I still wish I had been there…I should've been right there…"

"It was right after morning classes…you _couldn't _have been there…"

"You don't get it…Conan got lucky this time…if the other kids had seen him like that he would've been ridiculed, probably for years…maybe until he graduated…how can I protect him if I'm not around?"

"You're already protecting him…and Evina… we made the decision to send them to this particular school because it's the only one geographically reasonable for us that allows them to go as far as they can go without being put into classes with kids five and six years older than they are… that was something that was your idea to look for…but no school is a utopia… the world isn't perfect Spencer."

"I know…"

"Yes they might still have hard times… but you're giving them something else…"

"Which is…?"

"A home with a father who loves them, with two parents who they know they can talk to when there are problems…who are there for them mentally as well as physically… you didn't have that…they do… you're already ten times the father your own dad was and you know that…"

"Ten times zero is still zero…"

"Ok bad example…but you know full well what I meant…" she replied. "At least you're around… that makes you at least a one… and ten times one is ten…not zero… sometimes I think you understand math better than plain English…"

"Thanks Maeve…"

"That's part of what I'm here for…"

A few months later, on a Friday after several cases which had run back to back… Spencer and Maeve were called to the head mistress's office in response to a fight that had ensued between Conan, James, Evina, and a little girl whose name that hadn't heard before, Emily. The four children sat, just outside the office, under the watchful eye of a very unhappy playground monitor while the head mistress discussed the incident, and each child's involvement in it, privately with each of the three families.

The office was…well…what you'd expect from the office of the head mistress of a private school… it's walls were a warm cream color, there were awards and commendations all over the walls and the desk and book shelves were a dark, solid oak.

"What exactly happened?" Reid asked, both to the head mistress and to his own son.

Conan had really done it this time…and he knew it…he slumped in his chair, sitting on his hands with a terrified look on his face. He knew that this time what he had done was going to bring down the one thing he hated more than time out and toys being taken away… his parent's anger… so he tried to distance himself from them, even through the door, and make his tiny form appear even smaller.

"It appears that Evina started to yell at Emily, then James yanked on her braid and that's when Conan hit him…that's what the monitor reported anyway…"

"I'd like to hear what happened from the children themselves if you don't mind…" Spencer said uncompromisingly.

So the four classmates were brought into the office, and sat on a row of little yellow plastic chairs.

"Kids… what happened…?" He asked.

They all started to explain themselves at once.

"One at a time…Evina…you go first…"

"Conan freaked out…not as bad as usual but…noticeable, because the lunch lady made his food touch… then at recess Emily started laughing at him for it so I told her to stop and then James pulled my hair and took one of my ribbons out and then Conan hot him and told him to leave me alone…"

"You three…is that basically what happened…?" The head mistress asked.

"Yes Ma'am…" they replied.

"Not my fault your brother's a freak…" Emily told Evina.

"Emily Crane…we do _not _talk about our classmates that way…"

"James…why did you pull Evina's hair?" Maeve asked.

"I wanted her to stop yelling at Emily…"

"I just wanted James and Emily to leave Evina alone…" Conan chimed in.

It was a grueling process but eventually all three families were given the accounts of the incident and it was decided that James and Conan would receive recess detention for two weeks and Emily would receive a month's worth of in-school suspension. Just when the other two families were starting to leave, Reid and Maeve were called back into the office.

"It is our opinion that both your children should be evaluated, in order to understand their lack of impulse control and adherence to certain routines and behaviors that borders on obsessive… If Conan's food touches or he's away from his sister for more than ten minutes at school it's too much for him to handle… we separate the children during tests and he didn't get a single one right on his last history test… it was on which regions each of the first thirteen colonies were a part of. Mrs. Collingsworth informed me that he did wonderful with the exact same information, in almost the same format of presentation just the day before during the review game. She also reported that he was agitated during the test but we can't tell if it was test anxiety, separation anxiety, or a combination of both… also when he does get upset he usually hits himself on the floor but today he hit someone else. Then there is the matter of Evina, after almost three months at this school we still can't get her to make eye contact and her first reaction to conflict is to fly off the handle and start screaming… we need to know why…"

The two young parents gulped. Would their children be deemed too unruly and expelled? What was the cause of their problems dealing with school life and interacting with their classmates? Would this evaluation reveal something horrible that might dash both theirs and their children's dreams for the future?

"They are not in trouble… I don't think they can help it at this point…but if we figure out why… then we can work on it… here and at home… I may be a head mistress but I am far from a monster...I just think the earlier we tackle this the better and easier it will be _for them._"


	8. Chapter 8: Garcia's Weekend

In the days that followed the fight, things finally started to turn around… after three months and a rocky beginning, the twins were adapting more fully to school life. It wasn't perfect, but it was better… Conan was having far fewer meltdowns, getting along, at least on a passive basis, with his classmates, and was even allowed to re-take the history quiz which had been the driving force behind the horrible mark on his progress report.

When Reid came home after yet another case, his son literally dragged him over to the fridge, on which was the new quiz with a hundred percent written in green pen across the top and lots of gold star and smiley face stickers.

"I did it Daddy…told you it wasn't because I didn't know…"

"Nice job Conan…I think we'll leave this one up here for a while…"

"Yeah…!" He said, jumping up and down and smiling… he threw his arms around his father's legs. Things were finally going good and Spencer could tell that is son finally had his confidence back and it felt like a weight was lifted off of him as well.

Later that night, when he was sitting on the bed in the master bedroom, reading… Maeve jumped on and sat next to him.

"Hey…I wanted to ask you something…"

"What is it…?"

"Ever since I got back in the lab, I've been part of a project to improve treatments for neurological chemical imbalances that have a genetic basis… to bring these conditions closer to being things we can cure and not just manage… the project is finally getting somewhere… ours and another lab, at a university in Oregon have come up with what appears to be pieces of a joint breakthrough… they want to send my team out there to compare results and share notes…"

"We aren't on another case right now but I'm supposed to guest lecture a graduate criminology class in Seattle…"

"But…if we're both gone then what will we do with the twins…?"

"Nana's on vacation…she went out to Las Vegas to see my mom…" he replied.

"Great…now what…?"

"We'll think of something…"

When Reid went to work the next day, which was Thursday, he slumped into his desk chair, while Garcia was bringing him some paper files.

"Whoa…why are you so glum? I thought things were finally going smoothly again…you look like you just failed your firearms qualifier…"

"Yeah…I'll never live that down will I?" He asked, not needing to be reminded of that embarrassing failure twelve years back.

"Reid…what's really going on…?"

"I really wanted to do the lecture in Seattle but…Maeve's going out of town this weekend for work also and with my grandmother on vacation…unless someone else drops out of the sky to watch the twins it looks like I'll have to pass…" He explained.

"Sounds like a job for the fairy godmother to me…" She replied. "Reid…this is what I am here for…do you remember when you saved girls' night by watching Henry on short notice?"

"Yeah…"

"Well now I'm stepping up for you…how long are you two going to be gone?"

"Well…I should be back by Monday afternoon…and Maeve will be back Tuesday morning…"

"Perfect…they can spend the weekend at my place, I'll get them to school on Monday…and I'll be prepared to go and get them afterward if your plane gets delayed or something…"

"You would do that?" He asked in disbelief, no so much that Garcia would help him out but that his problems were solved.

"Well duh…Reid…I've only been waiting like three and a half years for you to ask…I would love to…" She said.

"Ok… I'll tell Maeve and the kids…"

"Yay!"

"Hey Garcia…"

"Yes?"

"Please don't do anything crazy, like let them eat a ton of sugar, or stay up past their weekend bedtime, or get them out of class for some fieldtrip, or go on a toy shopping spree…"

"Well you're no fun…"

After work was over, Garcia went to the grocery store, but she had no idea what to pick up for the weekend ahead. So she called JJ.

"Hey Garcia…"

"JJ, I think I need your help…I'm watching the twins this weekend and I have no idea what three and a half year olds eat…"

"Then why don't you call Reid? I think he knows what his kids like to eat…" JJ said, making dinner for now, nine year old Henry.

"Because then he might think I'm not cut out for it and then what? How often do I get a chance to spend this much time with them…?"

"Not very…"

"Exactly…"

"So what do kids their age eat these days?"

"Mac and cheese, pizza, chicken nuggets…spaghetti…knowing Maeve they've probably been introduced to salads by now…"

"Ok…what about chicken nuggets…think I should get ones with shapes? I know Conan likes dinosaurs…"

"That's perfect…"

"Guess what…?" Reid said to the kids when he got home.

"What Daddy?"

"Your mom and I have to go somewhere…so you and your sister are going to stay with Penelope…ok?"

"What…why aren't we staying at Nana's? We always stay with Nana…" Conan reminded him.

"Well Nana is on vacation this time…and she's a little too far away…"

"Ok…"


End file.
